Red Arrow’s Ashley Layendecker and Katie Shaw. Sculptures by Paul Collins.
Characterizing Red Arrow as an East Nashville gallery — or even as a Nashville gallery, for that matter — is becoming less and less necessary. That’s partly because the gallery has grown to include artists working both inside and outside the city, but also because it functions — like many galleries in the post-pandemic art world — outside of regional limitations. Red Arrow is a great art gallery in East Nashville, but it would be a great art gallery anywhere.
“I can pinpoint the shift in our programming to the Ashanté Kindle and Khari Turner show in 2020,” says Katie Shaw, who works as Red Arrow’s gallerist alongside director Ashley Layendecker. That show, which featured work by recent Austin Peay graduates Kindle and Turner, was the gallery’s first to completely sell out. Shaw says that opened them up to a collector base they hadn’t been able to access before.
“We have continued to nearly double our sales every year since,” she says.
The gallery’s summer exhibition schedule may be its most ambitious yet. A two-person show of paintings by Keith Jackson and multimedia work by Desmond Lewis opens May 18. In June and August, the gallery will revisit last year’s successful Nashville Hot Summer group show in two parts — one in the East Nashville space, and one in a pop-up location in the newly revamped Arcade. For July, Dana Oldfather will mount a solo show in the main gallery space. It’s a lot, but the Red Arrow team is poised for greatness.
“Great artists live here,” says Shaw. “And people are collecting here too.”
See our extensive calendar of summertime events — and meet some of the interesting Nashvillians keeping this summer cool